-Caveat Lector-
townhall.com
Suzanne Fields
December 9, 2002
The soft bigotry of campus paternalism
George Wallace, Orval Faubus and Ross Barnett were men
before their time. They were merely infamous Southern
governors, trying to keep their public schools
segregated. They failed, but only because they never
got an education at Stanford, Penn or MIT.
Jim Crow is back, only he's supposed to be kinder,
gentler and mellower. You might call him Jimmy Crow
(or in some places, Jaime Crow). Whatever you call
him, he's the new big man on campus. Administrators
have freshened up the label, and their dorms are not
segregated houses, but "ethnic theme houses."
Nevertheless, these are living accommodations
determined by race, the latest trend in the soft
bigotry of campus paternalism.
At Stanford, these dorms require a glossary for
identification. Muwekma-tah-ruk is Native American,
Ujamaa is African-American and Casa Zapata is
Chicano/Latino. The Asian-American house is called
Okada, named for the author of a book about the
treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II,
when they were sent to live in ethnic-themed
resettlement camps.
Stanford students and administrators have been mildly
embarrassed - there may be hope yet - since a civil
rights organization exposed them in a study entitled:
"The Stigma of Inclusion: Racial Paternalism/Separatism
in Higher Education." The New York Civil Rights
Coalition reports that color-coded universities
encourage a "balkanized campus environment" and that
minority students at Stanford are "indoctrinated" into
a separate track for "special treatment" that many of
them did not ask for, or expect, when they applied for
admission.
"From those who believe that theme dorms represent a
divisive form of self-segregation, to those who see
them as paternalistic attempts by universities to
improve minority students' chances of success in
college," the Stanford Daily reports, "the system has a
wide range of detractors."
Descriptions of segregated theme dorms at other
colleges could fill a primer on diversity doublespeak.
Some of the new segregationists suggest that an ethic
theme house is no different from clustering students in
dancing, music, art, language or food. But "Chocolate
City" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a
black dorm, is not about brownies and chocolate fudge
cake, but a dorm to promote black culture, identity and
support for "our brotherhood."
The Latino Living Center at Cornell offers salsa and
meringue, which may sound like dip and lemon pie, but
they're the popular Latin dances. In between the fancy
footwork, the Latino students discuss the future of
immigration policy and the problems of gang warfare in
the inner-city barrios. The University of Pennsylvania
calls its segregated dorm the W.E.B. Dubois College
House, named for the famous black sociologist, to
promote African-American culture.
There's even a hip-hop group. One resident likes the
wide diversity based on skin color: "I was exposed to a
real mixture - to Africans, African-Americans, and
other black Americans like myself."
Stanford administrators say their multiethnic approach
has evolved since the first black theme house was
established in 1970. Thirty years ago the purpose was
to provide an ethnic neighborhood away from the ethnic
neighborhood. Today, the emphasis, according to Thom
Massey, assistant dean of the graduate life office, is
on the positive celebrations of African-American
culture for whites as well as blacks.
Students who like such arrangements say they choose
ethnic houses because they feel "safe" and appreciate a
comfortable support system provided by their own kind
that gives them time to adjust to the larger culture on
campus. This sounds to those of us with long memories
like making sure some people know their place.
The New York civil-rights report finds ethnic theme
houses part of a larger disturbing "educational"
problem. Their survey of colleges reveals a
segregationist agenda of race and ethnicity permeating
every facet of campus life - academic courses,
counseling, remedial programs and socializing, all
hiding behind clever euphemisms and pretty facades of
diversity.
Ethnic houses actually encourage what they decry, by
infantilizing students, pampering them in their ethnic
insecurities, and creating a divisiveness through
racial stereotyping. A Latino student gives away the
insidiousness of this approach, describing how he found
his blood roots at Amherst: "For me, there's more
consciousness of my background as a Latino male," he
says. "Before I came to Amherst, I wasn't thinking
about race or class or gender or sexual orientation, I
was just thinking about people wanting to learn."
All this, says the New York Civil Rights Coalition, is
a giant step backward for the civil rights movement: "
The purpose of higher education is to remove narrow
constrictions of the mind, to extirpate prejudice, to
remove barriers to the open pursuit of knowledge.
Separatism in all of its forms, but especially when it
is aided and abetted by college and university
officials and resources, is a betrayal of that
mission."
Shame on them.
�2002 Tribune Media Services
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What limits people is lack of character. What limits people
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